10x10 with University of Utah

Clinical Decision Support Distance Learning Course

This new contribution from the University of Utah to the AMIA 10x10 program is an in-depth course about Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tools, standards, and implementation. The course was designed and is taught by leaders and experts in the field. The instructors are affiliated with the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah, which has a five-decade-long history of innovations in CDS.

The online course was designed following active learning principles. It teaches state-of-the-art principles and practices to enable effective CDS. Topics include a review of the various types of CDS tools; principles of CDS governance and knowledge management; CDS technical architectures, standards (FHIR, SMART, CDS Hooks, Infobutton), tools (OpenInfobutton, OpenCDS); and CDS implementation and evaluation.

This is a semester long (Aug-Dec) and 3 credit hours course.

The course is targeted at health IT professionals, clinicians, computer scientists, human factors professionals, and other individuals who are interested in CDS, regardless of background or prior experience. The student cohort is multidisciplinary, with backgrounds in health care delivery, public health, computer science, biology, genetics, and information technology. Examples of roles that could benefit from this course include those engaged with CDS governance and implementation at health care or public health organizations, CDS designers/developers, health IT designers/developers, CDS researchers, and clinical/health services researchers interested in applying CDS in their research.

Directors

Kensaku Kawamoto, MHS, MD, PhD – Vice Chair for Clinical Informatics, Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah School of Medicine; Associate Chief Medical Information Officer, Director of Knowledge Management and Mobilization (KMM), and Chair of enterprise CDS Committee, University of Utah Health. Dr. Kawamoto’s leverages his experience in health informatics, software engineering, and clinical medicine to assist with the practical and scalable use of health IT to optimize disease prevention, diagnosis, and management. He is actively engaged in the development and adoption of health IT standards, co-chairs the HL7 CDS Work Group, and is a member of the US federal Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC). He directs OpenCDS (www.opencds.org), a multi-institutional, open-source initiative to enable advanced CDS at scale, and also directs the KMM Initiative at University of Utah Health, which coordinates the institution’s informatics support and governance for CDS to improving care quality and value.

Guilherme Del Fiol, MD, PhD – Vice Chair for Research, Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah School of Medicine. Dr. Del Fiol has over 20 years of experience in the design, development, evaluation and dissemination of clinical informatics and CDS interventions to improve the quality, safety, and value of health care. His research interests include the integration of biomedical evidence resources with EHR systems via “infobuttons” and clinical informatics tools leveraging health information exchange (HIE). As a co-chair of the HL7 CDS Work Group, lead author of the HL7 Infobutton Standard, and project lead of OpenInfobutton (openinfobutton.org), he is also engaged in the development and implementation of health IT standards and tools to promote dissemination of CDS across health care organizations and EHR platforms.

Course Faculty

Catherine Staes, BSN, MPH, PhD - Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah School of Medicine. Dr. Staes’ expertise involves systems analysis, clinical decision support, and standards, with a focus on improving communication between public health and clinical entities to assist clinicians and laboratories in making decisions that meet public health goals.